I can’t believe that after all this time I didn’t write in here, the only thing that made me find a moment to come and write is my nails! After 27 years of nails biting and, especially, skin biting around the nails, I have stopped! A few weeks ago I was at a point of my life where stress was just too much and I felt like I was going to blow up and my fingers were hurting horribly so much they were bleeding! So I decided to go and have a manicure done, thinking that if I would spend the money on my hands maybe I’d stop screwing them all, and since March 19th 2003 I have not bit my fingers anymore and now the whole skin and nails look gorgeous! How cool is that! No more bleeding, no more hurting. Now, I am thinking about this and I realize how strong is the mind… My God! The power of the mind… you can do anything with it! You just have to really want it, and you can do it. Anything! I tell you. It’s great! I feel like a baby now because I look at my fingers all day long, all amazed, like I have never seen hands and fingers before! It’s funny and I wonder when I’m really going to get used to it… Now I am writing on the computer and I hear clickclickclick on the keyboard and I make myself think of those women in New Orleans….. (see the past post “THE SHOW MUST GO ON…”) Ha ha ha!
Well… here I am. Yellow, green green, blue’s there?!
I have been away, I have been crazy busy, I have been out of this world! It all started with a month in beautiful Australia in the beginning of the year… (when Dr Rick found my number and called me…). Oz was great, I met great people, made nice new friends, left some behind. Such is life when you are a young woman… Eh! What can you do. My life is like a collection of scissors…
After spending an intense month with my dearest friends Mal & Cam there, with a few great gigs in Melbourne, Adelaide and Sydney, I got back to Canada with a fulljammedpacked schedule for the rest of 2003. Started by recording my first Barbara Brown mix CD which came out in March, then had a few dates in the US and Canada of which, apart the great night in Chicago and the one in Denver where I was making the whole club singing Round & Round when I was putting the volume down (and it worked, what a fab night!), I had horrible gigs. I won’t spend any time talking about those bad gigs, so let’s just speak about other stuff. After a great tour in Europe in the beginning of March, with amazing gigs for Godskitchen around UK and Ireland (spent St Patrick day in Dublin, had 3 1/2 pints of Guinness, WOW!) and with a great “take 3” at Decadence in Thessaloniki with Brian and Thanasis (we missed Malissa so much, but we kept her a place beside us at the table) I went back to Montreal for a day and then went down to Miami for a quick 24 hours in and out just to do a photo shoot for URB (out in July) and a live radio show on Radio 1 with/for Fergie. This was really cool actually! Fergie is really cool! He’s the nicest guy, really chill (and crazy at the same time – happy dayz) and so generous! I am really happy to have met him and have worked with him, and his producer Emma as well, what a pleasure to work with both! I really had great laughs with them two!
After Miami, I had not very good gigs in NYC and Toronto. I was very depressed by them. I thought it was me, I was so hard on myself… and now I know… it was just those gigs. What I needed was to get back to Europe to play, to know it wasn’t me! Now I am back to Europe, I am sitting in my small flat overlooking the river Thames in London, and I had such a great weekend I only want to talk about it! Oh my GOD! I had the best gigs of my life!!!! What a tour! It was tough, 4 gigs in a row in Spain, and now I am sick like a dog (I am actually wondering if I didn’t catch the SARS virus when I was in Toronto last week, but let’s hope not!!), but I am so proud of my weekend! I really needed to have gigs in Europe to feel good again about DJing! I played Madrid Thursday, Barcelona Friday, Oviedo Saturday and Alicante Sunday. One gig more amazing than the other!! In Madrid on Thursday I played at Emotions (Christian Varela night) and it was real fun! I also met Alessandro…….!
Piu in Barcelona was fantastic! I had a great 3 hours in my little bubble and people were following me everywhere.. Then, we get to the serious stuff: LA REAL in Oviedo. Mamma mia! I played the HARDEST MOFO SET IN MY LIFE and I enjoyed it so much! Lately I haven’t been playing so hard, I wasn’t in the mood for it anymore… must be because I played too many “crossover” gigs (Godskitchen, Greece, US, sets at Radio 1, etc.), but my God HOW DID I ENJOY LA REAL AND PLAYING SO HARD AGAIN!!!! I feel like hard techno is back in my heart. It was incredible! Real RELENTLESS night! That’s what it was!
The fourth gig on Sunday in Alicante was, as everyone knows, one of my favourite gigs in the whole world: Metro. Again, what a night! Love, smiles, whistles, hands in the air, everything! And this time – I SWEAR TO GOD – people were jumping so hard that I was literally afraid we would all fall down, as we were upstairs on the terrace where they usually do the Sunday night, above the club. What a fuckin’ amazing night!! WOW. I know, I know, I am repeating myself… Well, I reckon soon the Devil on Rollerskates will sign in to help me out with my English dictionary…
I traveled with Lloyd this weekend. Lloyd works for Trust The DJ and he’s been sent on the road with me this time and it was really fun!
He actually asked me after the gig in LA REAL “is this why you call yourself relentless?” and I said “euh… YES!!!”.
Right, Lloyd… that’s a funny story… Ha ha ha. The poor guy goes on the road thinking he will get out of London and have a nice relaxing time… Yeah right!! Not with 4 gigs in a Row in Spain, where clubbing starts at 3-4 AM! Ha ha. It was like army this weekend! The first day him and I were like blablablablablabla, the second day a little less talking, the third day we were mainly silent and anything we would say wouldn’t make any sense and we’d only say, after a slight delay, “huh?”, and by the fourth day we were completely silent, actually almost forgetting we weren’t traveling on our own…
Also, sweet Lloyd is a House head. So I told him prior to our trip “are you ready to be educated and learn about Techno my dear?” and he was like “yeah yeah”……….
Well, can you believe that on the first night Lloyd was wearing ear plugs, on the second he didn’t, on the third he was nodding his head on my music and on the fourth he was actually dancing in the middle of the dance floor? I am proud of myself. The Misstress (Mistress in this case) has trained a new student, once again! Hehehehe.
But anyway, to get back to the Spain tour… Spanish people are just amazing! And I find it even more amazing to play such HARD TECHNO and seeing them liking it so much! And women dancing on the hardest techno like if it was House Music, I think it’s really cool and sexy! I love Spain! Also this time I made an effort to get up a little early and have lunch in restaurants instead of eating bocadillos for 4 days in a row. So I ate well and I don’t feel like a blown potato now!
The only think I would change about Spain is the laidbackness though… I have been traveling non stop for 7 years, and I get funny stories all the time, but never did I get this one: we were over an hour delayed to go back to London from Madrid because all the “fuellers” in Madrid airport decided to go on a strike in the middle of the afternoon! I was so tired that I didn’t even have the energy to get annoyed, and I was just laughing and writing notes down as this was certainly going to go in my TRUTH post. What else am I going to see in the future, travel-wise?
Other than that I would like to announce a few new things happening…
In June I am releasing a mix CD (probably double pack) for Florida 135 in Spain, and will then do a promotional tour for this album so I will be at SONAR for the first time, at MONEGROS for a second time and will probably do more Spanish dates over the summer, and I really can’t wait because I am just going to have a blast!
Also, ITURNEM has now definitely kicked in. You can go and read the “CONCEPT” page in the site to find out how come I have had to change label name and how did I come up with the name ITURNEM…
I am no longer with US agency AM ONLY since now over a month. You can now find me under the same single roof whether it is for Management or North American and World Wide bookings: at COSMACK. No need to go right and left to try and book me or work with me now. Just one place, much better, much easier and much more organized than my professional life has ever been before!
So after all this I am now resting properly before heading to my next gigs where I will surely have more great nights: my residency at Code in Birmingham on Friday, and a gig at Jaiss in Empoli (Italy) on Saturday.
Finally, I took one month free from traveling, as of next week, where I will be in studio the whole time apart from playing 3 local gigs in April and May, and will work on my Misstress Barbara VS Barbara Brown VOL. 3 and a few remixes. And I am very proud to announce a new release coming up on ITURNEM for the summer: the lovely track GONNA MAKE IT, by Kaskade, which I have just licensed to re-release on ITURNEM with remixes from Barbara Brown, Misstress Barbara and more.
This track is very dear to me. One of the nicest memories for my ears from my time in Oz, and I look forward to make it a big project for my Summer 2003 and for ITURNEM.
Look out for that, and more!
All my best to you all and, especially, all my blessings to all the suffering people in this mad world. We don’t need to fight for our rights (even though there is a song that says so…..), not physically at least. I wish there could be PEACE & LOVE in this world, forever!
No need for war!
Though I wish that all the crazy people; violent people; ungrateful people; hypocrite people; manipulative people; mean people; people without balls and people who back-stab others would go to ****!
I know I am tough… with no mercy… and that I collect scissors… but I also collect hearts and give them away, often to the wrong people, but I hope only to the right ones from now and on…
Barbara